CaseManager for iPad

New York civil rights lawyer John Ware Upton doesn’t have a website that I can find, but he does have an iPad app: CaseManager for iPad. It’s not the prettiest software—although with notableexceptions, legal software rarely is. Why would you want to do all your case management in a proprietary iPad app? Got me. If I get a chance to test drive it, I’ll let you know.

If you want to check it out in the meantime, it’s $14.99 in the App Store.

Sam is the founder and Editor in Chief of Lawyerist.com, the best place for lawyers to learn how to start, manage, and grow a law practice, and home to the community of innovative lawyers building the future of law.

5 Comments

Okay, I got a review copy, but I’m not going to do a full review. By comparison to other case management tools, this is dirt cheap. That doesn’t make it a good value. It is fugly, for starters. Whoever Mr. Upton hired to do the design wasn’t qualified for the job.

Everything in CaseManager is walled off from the rest of your iPad, so the calendar can’t see your regular calendar. The same goes for contacts, tasks, etc.

And, of course, you have to do all your case managing on your iPad, which isn’t actually very useful. Upton told me there is some way to sync the data to your computer, but it wasn’t obvious to me, and there doesn’t seem to be any way to manage the data from anything but an iPad, even if it works.

I removed this pretty quickly after installing it to test it. It’s much easier to just use Clio in the browser.

I guess you didn’t like the application, but fugly? That’s pretty strong language! In fact, the contacts and calendar entries automatically enter the iPad contacts and calendar, and then those of the desktop computer when the iPad is synchronized. But the main issue is the local data storage–as a result of it, this application works whether you are connecked to the Internet or not–in short-everywhere. For many lawyers– in court, on a subway, outside, on vacation, when the Internet is down, etc.–this is a benefit.

I can’t find any button to add any info other than the case name. I usually can figure these things out, but I have an IPad 2, and my finger is sore from tapping the screen in a fruitless attempt to find a way to add info.